


Prodigal

by the_original_n_chan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Divergence, Disassociation, Gen, Reiner Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1229836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_n_chan/pseuds/the_original_n_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reiner comes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prodigal

**Author's Note:**

> Canon divergence around the mid-50s chapters, where Levi's squad goes into hiding. Major spoilers up through the end of the Clash of the Titans arc.
> 
> Disclaimer: All rights reserved to the original creators. No copyright infringement is intended.

“They’re bringing him here!”

The shout rang through the Garrison compound’s halls, and the remnant of the 104th looked up, distracted from their quiet conversation. Eren realized that at some point the traffic in the central hall had increased from virtually nothing to a buzz of excited, not exactly organized activity. So whatever this was, it hadn’t been on the day’s schedule. He wondered what was going on.

Apparently Jean did too. “Hey—who?” he called out to a small clump of soldiers booking it eagerly toward the main door. “Who’re they bringing?”

“It’s a survivor!” one of the men yelled back, spurring an outburst of eager shouts from around the hall, the explanations tumbling over each other.

“A survivor from the rescue mission!”

“They spotted him running for the Wall and got him inside!”

“It’s a fucking miracle!”

Eren’s heart leaped. “What division?” he called, and one of the Garrison soldiers, spotting his insignia, gave him a quick grin.

“Survey Corps!”

Another survivor. _Another survivor._ He hardly dared believe it. After _days._ Whoever it was was either insanely lucky or badass beyond belief, or both. Even as shock and wonder flooded him, he was already hurrying for the door, weaving between the older men and women, vaguely aware of Mikasa already at his shoulder, the others trailing along in their wake. He wished Armin was with them too, but he was sitting in on a meeting with the commander and Dot Pixis and some other high-up people—supposedly serving as Erwin’s secretary, but Eren knew it was really to let Armin listen in on their talk. That the older men valued Armin’s insights gave Eren a flush of pride in his friend, but not even the least bit of surprise. After all, Armin had always been the smartest person Eren knew.

Stepping out into the courtyard, he thought for a moment that he was going to have to elbow his way through the groups of gawkers, but when they saw who it was they edged aside from him. He tried not to think about the fact that there was still that trace of uneasiness in his presence. He might be humanity’s hope, but he was also a Titan shifter and the reason why so many people had been lost, from all the divisions.

He broke through the last line of bystanders and froze.

The man sitting on the bench lifted his head, half laughing at something one of the people around him had said. Close-cropped blond hair, broad, powerful shoulders, the blunt lines of those features—all familiar, too wrenchingly familiar. 

Reiner looked up—his eyes met Eren’s, then registered the rest of their squad, and his face lit up with a wide, incredulous smile. “You guys! You made it back! Is that all of you? Where’s Armin, and Ymir, and—”

“ _YOU FUCK!_ ” The scream rang off the outpost’s high walls, shatteringly raw and echoing. Connie flew past Eren, almost literally—leaped and roundhouse-kicked high, and if Reiner hadn’t already been starting to stand up, Connie’s foot would have smashed him in the head or throat. As it was Reiner staggered backward, knocking over the bench and having to catch himself on the wall. It left him open as Connie slammed his forearm across Reiner’s face. Blood splattered across the bricks.

“ _YOU FUCKING FUCK THAT WAS MY VILLAGE THAT WAS MY_ FAMILY _—YOU KNEW! YOU FUCKING KNEW THE WHOLE TIME!!_ ”

“ _Traitor_ ,” Eren breathed. His fists were clenched, his chest cramping, his vision threatening to blur with tears of rage and anguish. He was barely aware of the shouts of alarm, the scuffling as the Garrison soldiers cleared space around them.

“ _I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!_ ” Connie howled, dropping back just long to catch his balance and then lunging again. His eyes were mad and blazing, his teeth bared like a wild animal’s.

Reiner had recovered enough to block Connie’s next flurry of blows, but he didn’t return them or do anything more than try to defend himself as he backed away. His expression was bewildered. “Connie—what—what—” Connie snarled and leaped for his face, fingers clawed; Reiner ducked aside, just barely. “I don’t understand! What’re you doing?”

“ _Traitor!_ ” Eren stalked a step forward, another one, _faster_ , and then he was hurling himself at Reiner as well. Someone in the yard screamed. From some dreamlike distance he was aware of Jean yelling.

“Sasha, _run!_ Get the captain! Or a squad leader— _anyone!_ ”

No _time_ —and even as he moved the thought flashed through his mind to bite, to shift, before Reiner could do so, but the yard was too small, there were too many people. Instead he tackled Reiner’s right arm and got a lock on it, forcing it down and back, and Reiner finally began to fight—he threw his weight against Eren with a grunt, pivoting into Eren’s hold to keep his arm from being pinned behind him, and at the same time kicking out, an awkward, slightly off-balance sweep that was still enough to make Connie jump back with some lingering trace of self-preservation. “You’ve gone crazy!” Reiner shouted. “ _Both_ of you!”

“You’re a _traitor!_ ” Eren slammed his elbow into Reiner’s ribs and heard the sharp catch of breath—tried to lever the larger man off and shoulder him back up against the wall. “You’re a filthy fucking traitor! It’s because of you—the _two_ of you—that all those people are dead!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about— _oof!_ ”

“ _Just stop with the fucking lies!_ ” Connie had gotten inside Reiner’s reach, had his hand clenched in Reiner’s shirt as he drove his other fist into Reiner’s side again, and again, punctuating his words. “It’s always _lies_ with you— _lies—LIES_ —” And he was spun away, half-falling, as Reiner back-handed him across the face. Reiner’s eyes were wild with shock and desperation, pleading, a sharpening edge of anger.

“You’ve lost your minds,” he snarled—then, louder, yelling, “ _You’ve all lost your fucking minds!_ I didn’t _do_ anything! I keep telling you!”

“ _Shiganshina!_ ” Eren flung back at him. “ _Trost!_ All those people when the Walls came down—the civilians _and_ the soldiers!” The barest sketchy outline of the dead, the dead, the so very many dead. “And all the people who got killed trying to get me back when you kidnapped me! That’s _all_ on you!”

“You’re crazy— _you’re crazy_ —”

“ _I trusted you—you were my friend—and you SHIT on that!_ ” Connie was back in it, bleeding, hitting viciously. “ _I WILL TAKE YOU APART, MOTHERFUCKER, TITAN SHIFTER—_ ”

Reiner faltered, whether at the verbal or the physical abuse, Eren didn’t know. “O-Oi, _someone_ —” 

How dare—how _fucking_ dare Reiner try to get pity or help from anyone here? Eren released Reiner’s arm abruptly, spun, and grabbed for Reiner’s head, wanting only to _smash_ it into the wall, the fury an explosion ripping through his chest—the fury, and the shattering grief breaking in on him all over again as he screamed, “ _Hannes would be alive if not for you_ —”

“ _Stop this!_ ” an authoritative voice rapped out. “Get them all under control.”

Somebody dragged Connie out of the fight, and in the next instant there was a pair of arms hooked under Eren’s armpits, hauling him backward. “ _Eren_ ,” Jean was saying urgently in his ear, and Eren bucked against that grip, would have twisted around and punched the bastard for interfering, except that Mikasa was there too, clutching at him, her arm braced across his chest as she helped Jean pull him back. 

Some of the rage-fog lifted. It was taking three Garrison soldiers to hold Connie back; he was still screaming, just incoherent noise now, mixed with choking sobs. Reiner was face down on the paving stones, arms twisted up behind his back by another pair of soldiers. “ _Gag him_ ,” Mikasa snapped, and when the Garrison officer who seemed to be the one taking charge of the situation looked sharply at her, she added, her voice cold and flat, “He’s the Armored Titan.”

Gasps, cries, and mutterings, all around the courtyard, a wave of alarm and dismay, even terror, just barely controlled. _This again_ , and Eren suddenly wanted to collapse, or throw up, or weep. On the ground, Reiner struggled to lift his head—his eyes hunted for and found Eren’s, his gaze frightened and disbelieving. 

“No... _no_....” 

And then his head was wrenched back, the cloth gag forced into his mouth, and whatever he might have said was choked off into a wordless grunt of pain and denial.

No? Fucking _no?_ How could Reiner even _pretend_ that...and Eren blinked, catching his breath with a start at the flicker of memory. 

“He...forgot.”

“Huh?” Jean wondered, letting go of him at last, and Mikasa just looked at him, still and curious, waiting for him to explain. 

This thing...he didn’t know if he _could_ explain it. Because it made no sense at all. But....

“That time in the forest,” Eren murmured, as he watched a horde of Garrison soldiers dragging Reiner away across the flagstones, toward the compound’s dungeon. “Just for a moment... _he forgot_.”

 

* * * *

 

Sighing, Armin pushed open the tower’s door and started across the courtyard. The moon had risen, near full and bright, competing with the yellower, flickering glow of the torches to light his way. He was tired—it had been a busy day even before things had dissolved into chaos and the strategy meeting had turned into an emergency one, a long, involved discussion as they tried to figure out what to do with their prisoner. For the moment, it had been decided to let him cool in the dungeon until morning, for psychological effect as much as anything else. Bound and gagged as he was, he wasn’t going anywhere. And it wasn’t going to be a comfortable night.

Their prisoner. _Reiner_. Almost impossible to believe it. But then _impossible_ was starting to become a useless category of events, considering everything that happened over the last couple of months.

As he approached the barracks that Levi’s squad had been assigned to temporarily, he spotted a small figure sitting hunched up on the steps, arms wrapped around her knees. “Oh, Historia,” he greeted her as he drew near. He’d caught the _K_ in the back of his throat, but at least it was getting easier to remember to use her real name. “Where is everyone?”

“In bed, I think, or at least inside. They gave Connie something to get him to sleep.” As he put his foot on the first step, she murmured, her voice dull but with an underlying tension in it, some thread of feeling that he couldn’t quite identify, “Do you think it could be true, what Eren says? That he could have forgotten?”

Armin paused. “I don’t know,” he replied slowly. “I guess so? I mean, I believe what Eren said, but this seems a lot more extreme than what he described.” 

“Forgotten _everything?_ Just like that?” Historia’s emotions were clearer now: outrage, which he could understand, since that certainly made everything all too easy and convenient for Reiner (although Armin was pretty sure that in the end nobody was going to let it excuse Reiner from his moral culpability), and frustration, which he suspected had something to do with Ymir. “That can’t be right. He _has_ to be lying.”

Armin sighed again and then sat down next to her, tucking his hands between his knees as he considered the matter yet again. He wanted to think so too. But it would take a _really_ stupid man to believe that they wouldn’t immediately leap to that exact same conclusion and treat him accordingly—imprisoning him, probably torturing and ultimately killing him as the enemy of all humankind. And Reiner had never been stupid. 

Assumption, then: Reiner was telling the truth, at least in part. It was a weak assumption, but the only realistic alternative he could think of was that Reiner was playing some kind of sacrifice role, and that seemed unlikely too. A Titan shifter was an awfully powerful piece to just throw away. He didn’t know if Bertolt, Reiner, and Annie had been following detailed instructions from whomever had sent them, or if they’d been acting at their own discretion, but—

Something had been niggling at him, and he frowned, trying to track that disquiet. “Historia, when Reiner appeared, did he have a horse? Or maneuver gear?”

“No...they said he was running for the Wall. And I didn’t see him wearing any gear.”

The Armored Titan had last been seen deep in Wall Maria’s territory, fighting for his life. Obviously Reiner had survived. But then what? Would he have returned to his homeland, wherever that was, to regroup, and maybe get new instructions? 

Gone there, and then come all the way back?

Even for a Titan shifter, covering that much distance was difficult and dangerous. For a man without gear, without even a horse for speed—

If Reiner had truly forgotten who he was, he wouldn’t have been traveling as a Titan. He would have had to be on foot all the way. So without his warrior identity intact, he almost certainly couldn’t have returned from that homeland, or even from any reasonably distant hideout.

He must have already been very close when he flipped personas. Maybe close enough to see the Wall. 

No, make that probably.

So why would he have been so close?

A mission of some kind. _Obviously._ That was the very first thing to suspect, that people were already suspecting and watching out for, waiting with nervous alertness for the other shoe to drop. _That_ wasn’t the question that was bothering him. Turn around; go back.

But say...following from his original assumption...if Reiner _was_ telling the truth, and if he had suddenly switched in the middle of a mission, without any warning—

—and if he hadn’t been alone—

—assuming Bertolt had survived as well—

—with the mission thwarted and Reiner in enemy hands—

—what would Bertolt be doing _right now?_

“Armin?” Historia sounded puzzled. He realized that he’d stood up, that his hands had tightened into fists. 

“If he didn’t come alone—Bertolt will be desperate,” Armin murmured, certainty rising swiftly in him, a growing pressure of urgency inside his chest. “He won’t follow whatever the original mission plan was.” He shook himself, then stepped abruptly off the stairs, starting back across the courtyard. “Kr—Historia, tell Captain Levi, or anyone else in authority that you can find! Bertolt will come _here_.” 

“W-Where are you going?” Historia’s startled cry rang out behind him as he began to run.

“I’m going to check on the guards...!”

 

* * * *

 

Reiner woke up falling—just managed to catch himself, straightening his knees, before his arms took his full weight. He was still jerked up short, though, sending a spasm through his shoulders, and the chains overhead clanked warningly. With a grunt of discomfort, he pressed back against the rough wall, seeking its support, trying to ease some of the strain on his exhausted legs. He closed his eyes again, just for a moment.

 _Hell_ of a way to end up. Both hands manacled and then shackled to a bolt set into the wall somewhere above his head, _gagged_ , for crying out loud, and left in a dungeon cell to rot. He was painfully thirsty, his throat rasping each time he swallowed; the cloth in his mouth, still spit-damp but drying stiff and chafing in places, had taken most of the moisture from his tongue. Being hungry wasn’t even so bad as that. He blew a breath out through his nose, tired, frustrated, and more than a little afraid.

_You fucked up. You really fucked up._

Why would he even think that? All he’d done was...he’d gotten away, he’d made it _home_ , for fuck’s sake, and here they were calling him a traitor.

For what? What did he do? Or...what _should_ he have done?

_They’re going to kill you._

His heart had started hammering again. _Titan shifter_ , Connie had called him—Connie had been out of his mind, and Eren was no better, and why wouldn’t anyone just _listen_ to him? He’d tell them...he’d....

His head hurt. He pried his eyes open again, wincing at the light of the one torch, dull as it was. The guards had vanished somewhere, which annoyed him, even though all they’d done since coming on shift was stare at him with a kind of blank distaste. What if he’d actually fallen and pulled his arm out of its socket, or fainted, or gotten sick, or even had to piss really badly (which was almost but not quite an issue)—it wasn’t like he could yell for help. But then, they weren’t going to give him anything, were they. Not even so much as a fucking sip of water.

There were slow footsteps on the stairs, and he glared at the cell block entrance as one of the guards reappeared. No, it was yet another guy. This one needed to hit the Garrison’s quartermaster up sometime soon and get a better uniform; he was very tall, and that cloak was much too short....

And Reiner started as the realization hit him, as he recognized the profile beneath the hood— _yeah, and why would a guard be going around hooded!_ —an extremely familiar, desperately welcome face, although something about its expression seemed odd. Maybe it was because of all the shadows. “Bertl!” he tried to say as the other approached the front of his cell, and the cursed gag garbled it into incoherence. “ _Bertl!_ ”

“I’m sorry, Reiner.” Bertolt’s voice was low and even, though a bit choked. He put one side of the cloak back a little, unslipped a long, dark shape— _rifle_ —placed the muzzle between the bars with almost gentle care. Reiner could see his face more clearly, serious, focused—a little sad?—as he aimed....

_Aiming...at me?_

_Why?!_

_BERTOLT!_

No answer. Just the black gape of the gun, like a staring eye, Bertolt’s finger shifting on the trigger—a small, hurtling blond figure—collision and Bertolt’s grunt of shock—deafening, mind-numbing thunder and a searing pain across his right temple, the world whiting out for a moment, and then—he steadied, fingers knotting around the chains, the steel links digging into his skin. There was a scuffle outside the bars, between Bertolt and, and—Armin?— and Bertolt gasped, jerked back just far enough to be able to bring the rifle around, slamming the stock up underneath Armin’s jaw. Armin fell backward, hit the floor hard, and then shook his head almost at once and started struggling with desperate urgency to rise. Shaky, his legs not yet fully underneath him, he looked up as Bertolt backed away, toward the dead-end of the cell block. 

Bertolt’s eyes were very wide, very black in the dungeon’s gloom, and then suddenly, as he stared back at Armin, they blazed with an emotion that Reiner had never seen in him before: a raging, scarcely sane _hatred_. His gaze fixed on Armin, Bertolt lifted his hand, and with a yelp of terror Armin forced himself to his feet, bolted staggering for the stairs as Bertolt— _no_ —bit at his thumb— _here?!_ —drawing blood—

_Titan shifter._

That and the flash of _then I...?_ , too quick even for despair, was all Reiner had time for before the world exploded around him.

 

_...hurts..._

_Fuck...hurts, dammit._

His head, and his arms and shoulders...he got that far and realized he was swinging slightly, dangling from his wrists. With a heave, he kicked out, hit something that shifted with a rocklike slide and crunch, got his feet back underneath him—with stabbing agony in his shoulders as they flexed again—and opened his eyes.

It took a moment for anything to make sense to him, but then his vision cleared, adjusted to the unexpected dimness. There was no torchlight, just narrow beams of moonlight illuminating the drifting dust, slanting in from high above through the holes...the holes in the....

_Oh...shit._

Most of the cell block was destroyed, stone walls cracking and splitting, the barred front of his cell shoved inward, twisted and mangled—the ceiling, no, almost for sure the bulk of the building above blown out, blown _upward_ , by the enormous mass of raw, skinless flesh that shuddered and wisped vapor in front of him. _Partial transformation_ —what little he could see didn’t even look like body parts, maybe a vestigial arm jammed into the space in front of the cells, crushing the bars, and the rest just one vast hulk of meat filling up everything except for the few spaces that let the moonlight through. _Very small, for Bertolt. Couldn’t get any wider than the building’s foundation?_ It heaved suddenly, bucked like an earthquake, an ear-blasting bellow booming out from somewhere high above, and the movement and vibration sent chunks of debris crashing down, raising more dust. Reiner covered his head reflexively, as best he could with his hands shackled, but only a few of the smaller pieces hit him. It was a miracle—the very fact that he was still _alive_ was a miracle.

_Bertolt, you idiot! You could’ve killed me!_

Had actually been going to kill him even before the change—but he didn’t have time to waste thinking about that now, or else he really _was_ going to die. He looked up at the bolt that held his chains. It still held firm, but there were cracks in the mortar that held the stones of the wall together. Another shock like the last one and they’d probably come down—yeah, and _crush_ him. No good waiting for that. Wrapping his hands around the chains, he gave an experimental yank, then hauled hard, grunting and panting around the gag. Nothing. _Fuck._ Adrenaline surged; he fixed his grip, then threw his whole body into it with a stifled roar, slinging himself to the left, and then sharply to the right—mortar crunched, and he found himself stumbling forward over and through the debris, the worked-loose stone crashing to the ground and dragging behind him. He almost slammed into the crumpled prison bars before he was able to stop, but at least the momentum had kept him from getting hit by any the other stones that had come down along with his own.

He ripped the gag free, gasping with relief, then wiped his sleeve across his face—sweat and a smear of blood from where the bullet had creased his forehead. He’d already been sweltering from the Titan’s heat—this close he could feel it radiating, an intense prickle like sunburn blooming on his skin. Actually touching it was going to hurt. He glanced up, quickly measuring the height and slope of the Bertolt’s Titan body, the size of the gaps that he _might_ manage to squeeze through, if he were lucky, and...yeah. Couldn’t climb that. That left the stairs, and getting to them was going to be brutal enough. He prayed they were still at least somewhat passable.

_Go. Go fucking NOW._

With a snarl, he lunged, thrusting his way past the bars. Lifting the block by the chains to keep it from dragging, he jammed his other shoulder and arm against the almost head-high wall of muscle, trying to elbow it aside, to force his way past and through. The heat went right through his shirt like it was nothing; he could feel his skin starting to sear almost at once. Okay, better idea—changing hands and shortening his grip on the chains, so he was holding them just shy of the bolt, he used the stone as a shield, shoving it against the Titan’s arm, kicking with his booted feet. That monstrous flesh yielded to the pressure, barely enough, and he wedged his way through the choke point of the doorway and up onto the rubble-strewn steps, yelping when he slipped and had to catch himself by grabbing at the steaming Titan with one hand. And...was it his imagination, or was the steam getting thicker? 

_Bad’s heading toward worse, all right. Gotta get out of here fast._

Bertolt’s arm dwindled surprisingly quickly, just a narrowing, truncated forearm and wrist jammed at an awkward angle in the curve of the stairs. The round stairwell had plenty of fallen stones and mortar in it, but unbelievably it was mostly still holding together—there even had to be a torch still lit somewhere up around the curve, because a flickering glow reflected off the wall, dimly lighting the way. It was enough for Reiner to see the Garrison soldiers sprawled limply, throats cut, lying in waterfall stains of blood. And further up the stairs, just barely beyond the reach of Bertolt’s stunted, deformed fingers, another body, blond hair in the torchlight—Armin.

Reiner scrambled upward. Bertolt’s fingers twitched, scrabbling on the stairs, and Reiner stamped on them in passing— _no hard feelings, Bud_ —before bending over Armin. Breath, pulse, yes—alive, just unconscious. He must have been flung into the wall or something by the blast of Bertolt’s change. Reiner glanced uneasily back at the Titan’s arm as it spasmed again, but the movement seemed more reflexive than purposeful. Bertolt was probably more worried about whatever was going on up where the rest of him was. Which, given the amount of time that had passed, could very well be the Garrison soldiers rallying to the attack.

_Hurry, stupid!_

In a sudden burst of urgency, Reiner grabbed for Armin. The shorter chain between his wrist manacles kept him from getting his hands very far apart; putting his arms around Armin would take too much wrangling—too much time that they didn’t have. Instead he knotted his fist in the back of Armin’s jacket and half-lifted, half-dragged him along. He hoped like hell that Armin didn’t have a broken neck or back. Loose debris skittered out from under his boots, and Armin’s dead weight plus the stone catching on things, banging against his shins, and constantly threatening to trip him up slowed him even more. _Damn it. Damn it._ He panted his way up the steps—had made it halfway around the first curve when he glimpsed shadows disturbing the torchlight, heard footsteps and shouting that were garbled by echoes but sounded like an alarm either being raised or answered. He yelled desperately for help, and in the breath of silence that followed he caught a rising sound just at the very edge of hearing, a soft, high-pitched whistle, exactly like a tea kettle starting to boil.

_FUCK! Too late!_

With another yell, Reiner flung Armin down on the steps and threw himself on top of the smaller soldier, an instant before the wavefront of super-heated steam rushed up the stairwell and blasted over them both.

 

* * * * 

 

Armin was sleeping finally, dosed up on painkillers, oblivious to all the noise and movement around them. Mikasa sat on the floor next to his pallet in what had once been the side dining hall but was currently serving as a combination of emergency medical ward and command center, since the Colossal Titan had wrecked the main headquarters building and much of the rest of the compound. Eren wished he could sit there too, holding Armin’s other hand and just taking comfort in the fact that his friend was alive and only slightly injured, but it was all he could do at the moment not to pace the room, getting in everyone’s way and making himself a real pain in the ass. Adrenaline mixed with fatigue from his own brief Titan shift made him both jittery and a little loopy; the addition of anger, frustration, and snapping impatience didn’t help his mental state at all. 

He’d barely gotten his hands on the Colossal Titan and started climbing for the nape of the neck when the bastard had dissolved in the usual blast of burning steam, sending him and the handful of attacking soldiers plummeting toward the ground. Some of them had been able to catch themselves, or be caught by others; some hadn’t. He’d taken out another chunk of the compound himself, crashing down on it in his fall, and all he could do was hope that nobody had been inside it at the time. Between the Colossal Titan’s initial eruption from the dungeons and his thrashing around in the brief struggle that had followed, the destruction was immense, and the casualties were almost certainly going to be high. That traitor was going to pay and pay and _pay_ —for all his other crimes, and now for these new ones too.

But Bertolt had slipped away somehow in the confusion, losing himself in the darkness and the clouds of vapor. The fucker was somewhere in the town, or maybe he’d made it through the gate into Rose proper, or gone back over the Wall to the hell where he belonged. A search was being put together, but time had already been lost, there was no visible trail to follow, and Eren had a sinking certainty that he’d gotten away again.

But there was _someone_ who hadn’t escaped. 

Giving in to his restlessness at last, Eren stalked closer to the muted activity at the heart of the Survey Corps’ portion of the room. Around a scavenged desk, Hange was talking to Erwin and Dot, voice low, too quiet to quite make out, but intense. In a cleared area of floor, Levi stood on watch, blades in hand, attention focused with feline intensity on the man sitting in a chair in the corner, back to the wall, broad shoulders hunched miserably as he stared down at his shackled hands. Reiner looked pale and shocky, bewildered, and more than a little lost.

“He tried to kill me,” Eren overheard Reiner mumbling as he approached, apparently talking to himself, the words aimed at the floor between his feet. His voice was dully plaintive, uncomprehending. “Bertolt tried to _kill_ me.”

Because Bertolt couldn’t trust him anymore. The same way _they_ couldn’t trust him, not ever. How could you trust a man who could switch sides at any time, but especially at the most dangerous and stressful moment, and not even _admit_ that he was committing betrayal? Not even _realize_ it? 

_Impossible._

But even so, even with all of that...Reiner had _saved_ Armin. Had sheltered Armin from the blast with his own body, so that Armin had come away from it with just a couple of minor burns and a concussion. _That_ was the Reiner they’d known, the Reiner they’d all admired through training and beyond, strong and protective and caring, everyone’s brother, everyone’s friend. Seeing that side of him again— _still_ —hurt so fiercely that Eren could hardly even stand it. No matter what, he couldn’t find a way to reconcile those two men, the comrade and the monster, the _murderer_.

Distracted, he didn’t see when Historia had drifted closer; she was just there, stepping into the cleared space around Reiner. Levi stirred but didn’t say anything as she moved slowly forward. Sinking to her knees in front of Reiner, she laid her hands on his manacled ones as he gazed down at her with what could have been hope or dread. When she spoke, her voice was flat, and although it could have been called gentle, there was no softness at its heart, and no mercy.

“Reiner, no matter what else happens,” she said, “you have to stop hiding yourself from yourself.”

Reiner stared at her for another breath, and Eren could read the instant her words worked their way through his confusion—his eyes widened, his strained expression intensified, and Eren stiffened, immediately on guard. Pulling his hands away from hers, Reiner buried his face in them as he bent forward over his knees, the heels of his palms digging into his eyelids, his knotted fingers clenched in his hair. A low, guttural sound escaped him, a strangled moan, maybe a sob, and in spite of himself Eren thought he understood—could maybe even sympathize, just the littlest bit, with Reiner’s anguish.

Because apparently Reiner didn’t know how to reconcile those two people either.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came about because I had a sudden desire to see teeny-tiny Connie beat the shit out of Reiner. And then it went places. ^_^ I'm pretty sure that Reiner isn't really (canonically) anything like as dissociative as portrayed here, but hey, fanfic.


End file.
